HAITI: Enter Mama Doc

Citizen Doctor François Duvalier . . . has chosen Citizen Jean-Claude Duvalier to succeed him to the Presidency for Life of the Republic. Does this choice answer your aspirations and your desires? Do you ratify it?

Last week 2,391,916 residents of Haiti voted out to “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s proposal that he be succeeded by his hulking son, Jean-Claude, 19. If anybody voted non, the Port-au-Prince papers did not mention it.

Most educated Haitians who are acquainted with the 200-lb. “Baskethead,” as Jean-Claude is known, are said to be less hostile to the idea of his succession than skeptical. If any of Duvalier’s four children appears to have the sort of killer instinct demanded by the job, they reason, it would be his eldest daughter, the plump and hard-driving Marie-Denise (Dédé), 29. Dédé is so strong willed, in fact, that she is sometimes called “Mama Doc.”

In 1966, Dédé decided to marry Max Dominique, the tall (6ft. 6-in.), handsome presidential officer who stood behind her father on ceremonial occasions. Papa Doc was enraged; he had wanted a lighter-skinned son-in-law, and Max was very black. But Dédé won. Max was ordered to divorce his wife, who was paid a rumored $30,000 before she and her two children were shipped off to Jamaica.

In 1967, while Max was commanding Port-au-Prince’s military district, a letter turned up on Papa Doc’s desk accusing him and 19 other officers of plotting against the government. The other 19 were executed, but Dédé man aged to coax her father into sparing her husband. She and Max were allowed to go into exile, and Max be came Haiti’s Ambassador to Spain. Eighteen months later, Dédé returned to Port-au-Prince and deftly arranged the removal of her enemies from her father’s palace staff. When Max arrived three months later, he was given a royal welcome.

The ambitious Dédé Duvalier Dominique is, in short, the only person any one can remember who has engaged in a battle of wills with Papa Doc and survived. And local bocors (voodoo witch doctors) claim that she, alone among Duvalier’s brood, is his “spiritual daughter.” Jean-Claude seems certain to wind up wearing the presidential sash, but it seems equally likely that Dédé and Max will run things once the ailing Papa Doc, 63, takes his leave.